GridConcerns about U.S. grid grow along with demand for power
The U.S. grid is stretched to capacity and severely outdated; some experts fear that blackouts in the past years in New York, Boston, and San Diego will become more frequent in the near future unless a multi-billion dollar overhaul is worked out
Concerns that the U.S. power grid may not handle extreme demand // Source: kesanpostasi.com
As the demand for electricity grows, many people are hoping for massive improvements in the intricate power grid that keeps the lights on in most American houses.
While the United States has not seen anything close to the event that left 600 million people in India without power last week, the U.S. grid system is more of an old car that has been patched together with parts from other cars instead of one complete unit.
The U.S. grid is stretched to capacity and severely outdated. Some experts fear that blackouts in the past years in New York, Boston, and San Diego will become more frequent in the near future unless a multi-billion dollar overhaul is worked out.
“I like to think of our grid much like a water system, and basically all of our pipes are at full pressure now,” Otto J. Lynch, vice president of Wisconsin-based Power-Line Systems told the Washington Post. “And if one of our pipes bursts and we have to shut off that line, that just increases the pressure on our remaining pipes until another one bursts, and next thing you know, we’re in a catastrophic run and we have to shut the whole water system down.”
On 29 June, three electrical transmission towers were knocked down by swirling winds in West Virginia. The towers were built to withstand the winds that caused the blackout throughout the Mid-Atlantic.
“A fourth tower didn’t come down but had to be removed because it was pulled off kilter,” Todd Meyers, spokesman for FirstEnergy told the Post. “I don’t remember a time when this many came down. This is an unusual occurrence.”
The aging of equipment explains some of the equipment failures that lead to intermittent failures in power quality and availability,” the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) said in a report this year. “The capacity of equipment explains why there are some bottlenecks in the grid that can also lead to brownouts and occasional blackouts.”
ASCE calculated that an additional investment of $107billion was needed by 2020 to keep the electrical infrastructure whole.
“Electricity was primarily a luxury when the majority of our grid was built 50, 60 years ago,” Lynch said. “Most people didn’t require computers to do their jobs every day. They didn’t need the Internet access. IPhones didn’t need to be charged, and communication was all hard-wired, so you could still make a phone call when the electricity was out.”
Residents in Manhattan and Boston have already experienced outages this year and Texas, along with Southern California, is considered the most vulnerable this summer, but events have shown that a fuse blown almost anywhere within the grid can leave thousands of people in the dark.
While some repairs are being made in cities, a nationwide overhaul has not been considered yet because of the high costs that would follow. James J. Hoecker, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) during the Clinton administration, warned that without significant fresh investment, “We’re headed for some serious financial and economic difficulties.”
“The investment gap that we’re facing is a little scary,” he said. “In fact, it’s a little more scary than the [ASCE] report indicates.”
